Bought this for xmas for our son, but I ended up putting it together as it can get fiddly as there can be many parts to hold at once & the bolts are barely long enough to get the nuts on in some areas. However that aside, once the shell is complete it wont fit the car’s chassis without serious manipulation ! & even then the car is pretty much useless & has non exsitent steering, this car wont steer properly without the shell fitted & certainly doesn’t when (if) you can fit the shell ! A big disappointment meccano set with the worst radio gear I have ever come across ! (& I have built several rc cars). The only thing your child will get from this is learning how to read instructions & then be disappointed at the end. You may as well buy a flat packed wardrobe & get him to help, at least he wont expect it to do anything when its finished !
Rating: 2 / 5

My 8 year old son received this kit for Christmas, along with several Lego kits. After he managed to build the Lego himself, he decided he’d like to build his Meccano RC Car.

After about 10 mins of struggling it was clear that he had no chance of completing this kit alone, initially I offered to help, but it soon became clear this would be a solo effort!

I found the instructions to be pretty clear, many of the parts are very small, and can be quite fiddly once you’re trying to put different sections of the body together, but you get there in the end after some messing about.

The main challenge was putting the completed body work shell onto the radio control car unit (which you don’t have to build). It simply didn’t fit on without allot of persuading. In the end I had to use my Leatherman to bend around parts of the body work and enable it to fit. Once the shell was attached the problems unfortunately didn’t stop there!! I found that the front wheels rubbed against the body work, more Leatherman attention was needed to bend some of the panels and give the wheels clearance.

Eventually I managed to complete the kit (after about 3 hours), and my son seems to be enjoying racing it round the lounge.

So over all my summary would be:

Looks pretty cool when it’s completed, but putting it together is tricky. Meccano say this kit is suitable for an 8 year old, this is misleading at best. Can’t see anyone other than Dad putting this together, it’s just too tricky!
Rating: 2 / 5